About Meridian
Meridian Informatics was formed in 1989 then, in a frenzy of entrepreneurial confidence, the MIS staff of a major Australian diversified public company decided to outsource themselves.
From this foundation many of Meridian’s key enduring and defining characteristics were established; flexibility, customer & business solution orientation, longer term perspective, a focus (almost passion) on delivering working solutions and ensuring that these solutions continue to deliver value.
Throughout the 1990s Meridian focused and refined its approach, technologies and methods to guarantee successful implementation of business solutions and to maintain the relevance of those in a changing world.
Today we deliver financial service solutions that turn our client’s strategic & tactical business concepts into reality; delivered fasster, with greater certainty, for less initial & on-going cost; and we maintain and enhance these throughout their long productive life. We pay special attention to liberating business intelligence and meaningful reporting from the volume of operational data.
See Meridian's History for more details of our journey since 1989.
Our Clients
Meridian's clients have included many of Australian's largest financial organisations; most of the major Banks, many Insurance companies and financial service providers. We have also completed assignments for international organisations in Asia, Europe and North America. Some of the client's generous comments are in Client's Comments.
Some Financial Services Clients
| AMP Financial Services Sydney |
National Australia Bank1 Melbourne |
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| Colonial First State Investments Sydney |
IPAC Securities (now a division of AMP) |
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| Comalco Group Fairfield, NSW |
NSW State Department of Fair Trading Rental Bond Board |
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| Commonwealth Bank of Australia Institutional & Business Services Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth |
NSW State Ministry for the Arts Sydney |
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| CSR Limited (Group, Corporate & Operational business units) Australia & overseas |
Perpetual Trustees Australia Sydney |
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| Cognos Corporation (now part of IBM) Ottawa, Canada |
Phillips Fox (Lawyers) Sydney |
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| EDS Australia Sydney |
State Rail Authority of NSW "Rail Estate" (Property) Division |
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| FICS Group (now part of S1) Brussels, Belguim |
State Bank of NSW Ashfield |
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| Fisher & Paykel Auckland, New Zealand |
St George Bank1 Business Bank, Sydney |
Current & past clients of Meridian Informatics. Clients located in Australia unless otherwise noted
(1) via our former FICS Australia joint venture
We respect the policy of some organisations of not acknowledging even successful and on-going relationships with vendors
Some Client's Comments
Over the years clients have expressed their appreciation of our efforts with generous endorsements and citations.
The identifying details of endorsements here respect the different public endorsement policies of our clients.
Prospective new clients can be put in touch with suitable referees and current clients for assurance on Meridian's
capabilities and performance.
Bill Bennett, Deputy Manager Director
CSR Limited
"I would like to thank you and your team for the contribution you have made to CSR, particularly the work you have done in setting up some of the key computer systems on which we have come to depend. The fact that we tend to take these systems for granted is a measure of their high quality and I know you have worked hard to ensure that quality."
Senior Project & Delivery Manager,
Commonwealth Bank
"I have worked in conjunction with Meridian over many years in my role as a contract project manager for a major Bank. I found the Meridian teams approach technically innovative with focus on providing value for the required business functionality. The project staff have been team players integrating with the clients team and in some circumstances teams from several other suppliers to provide successful implementations."
Senior Product Manager,
Westpac Bank
"Despite the best (worst) efforts of the overseas supplier and similar (poor) efforts from our own IT group this product would never have gone live to our customers without the extraordinary, dedicated and sustained efforts of Meridian's local implementation team."
Application Development Manager,
AXA Australia
"Thank you very much for all your efforts this year. Meridian has shown great professionalism, not to mention patience, that is a great credit to the company."
Phyllis Ma, Relationship Manager
EDS Australia
"I have been associated with Meridian since 1995. Together we have overseen several project implementations. I have found them the most
consistently professional individuals I have ever worked with. I would not hesitate in recommending them for IT consultancy or significant
development/integration work".
"…just like to take this opportunity to say it has been a real pleasure to work with a professional organisation like yours…"
Matt Walkely, Program Manager
EDS Australia
"With my extensive experience with many software development vendors Meridian has excelled as a professional organisation willing to
focus primarily on the success of the customer and the project. In a sophisticated business environment with a complex application
Meridian has always fronted up with quality technology to meet the needs of the business. Meridian understands what business success
is all about."
"I would like to thank you all for all the assistance and project efforts you have undertaken during my time here.
As I have stated to you personally I think Meridian is by far and away the best vendor experience I had during my EDS time…"
Howie McQuarrie, Project Manager
EDS Australia
"It was a pleasure to work with such a professional and competent team at Meridian. They were proactive and open in communicating project issues and worked with us to resolve any problems to deliver excellent quality product on time."
Graham Baldry, Project Manager
EDS Australia
"Meridian is always flexible to the needs of the customer and the project. They delivered top quality product on time and
couldn't do enough to assist us in achieving a successful rollout"
"Meridian puts project and customer success as the first priority. I found Meridian staff competent, experienced and professional
and they work exceedingly well as a team to provide success to the customer"
EDS Australia is the Commonwealth Bank's principal technology provider and much of Meridian's CBA work involves EDS as a project collaborator, manager, participant or client. We therefore work closely with EDS project / program / account managers and they provide many generous comments all the more powerful as their experience covers many similar vendors in the same environment.
Our Partners
Meridian works with the best tools and infrastructure provided by partners to deliver its solutions. Like our relationships with Clients and our own team these partnerships are typically very long term.
Microsoft
Meridian has been a Microsoft Certified Partner since 1999. With most of our 'client' end solutions deployed on Windows platforms a comprehensive knowledge of these platforms is essential. Meridian staff have individual certification in Microsoft Certified Professional and Microsoft Certified System Engineer programs.
In addition to the platform knowledge we have specific expertise in designing, deploying and supporting Microsoft SQL Server Databases especially the "Data Staging" and OLAP components used to build Business Intelligence solutions. Access to software, training and special support services via the certified partner program enables us to offer our customers enhanced service on Microsoft Windows NT, 2000, XP and .NET client and server platforms.
IBM
Meridian has participated in IBM developer and partner programs since 1993. Initially as an extension of our Cognos PowerHouse 4GL relationship we developed and supplied software that was implemented on IBM RS/6000 and AS/400 platforms and were listed in programs for these platforms. In 1997 we were among the first in Australia to participate in the 'San Francisco' Java Framework program and this lead to our entry into the 'PartnerWorld for Developers' program as a 'commercial' member. Our Java solutions have been implemented of IBM pSeries, xSeries, and iSeries servers. IBM developer programs have provided various components that we have used in our solutions.
SUN Microsystems (now part of Oracle)
Meridian's relationship with Sun commenced in 1992 when the PowerHouse 4GL was ported to the UNIX operating system and first released on Sun platforms. Meridian's own solutions and those of it's application partners were offered on Sun workstations and Servers. Our involvement with Java since 1996 has greatly strengthened this relationship and Meridian is a member of both the Sun Developer Connection and the Java Developer Connection programs. Our Java solutions have been implemented on various Sun server platforms.
Cognos (now part of IBM)
Our oldest external relationship, first formed in 1985 when, as part of CSR Limited, we evaluated and chose the Cognos PowerHouse 4GL as our primary development language. Cognos became Meridian's first partner in 1990 based on Powerhouse and later we became 'Business Intelligence' partners based on PowerPlay and Impromptu reporting tools.
In addition to our business relationship Meridian staff have been active in Cognos International User & Partner Communities. Meridian's Bill Parker was the Australian representative on the Cognos Partner Council (94) and the Asia-Pacific representative on the Cognos International User Group Executive from 1989 to 1996 helping organise International User Conferences in Los Angeles (91), Dallas (92), Orlando (93), Sydney (94), London (95), Ottawa (95), and Sydney (96); Meridian staff have promoted and managed local user groups throughout the Asia-Pacific area.
The CORE Community
The CORE Community is a group of individuals and small companies in the United States, Europe and Australia who are working to build and deploy the Java based CORE Business Object Framework. This international effort is lead by Jonathan House a veteran builder of java application frameworks used by Wells Fargo, General Dynamics and others. We have collaborated with Jonathan since 1999 on CORE and previous frameworks.
CORE is designed to meet a specific need - to allow developers to quickly and reliably build complex, business logic intensive applications. Dealing with development issues such as binding user interface to business objects, handling persistence tasks, enforcing business rules takes up a most of the time in all projects. CORE provides all of these services and more, so developers can concentrate on developing the core business logic. The CORE-Framework project is hosted on Java.net.
Meridian was a founding member of the CORE community. The community forms the basis for a world wide resource pool to rapidly build such "business logic intensive" applications using CORE.
Open Source Community
The Open Source Community not only provides a vast and rich selection of peer reviewed tools, components and software but also encompasses the largest pool of peer reviewed resources relating to design patterns, techniques and methods. Groups such as the Agile Alliance inspire Meridian to continuously improve our delivery capability.
Meridian contributed to a number of Open Source Projects including the Jpivot Business Intelligence / OLAP Reporting project.
Meridian acknowledges the debt it owes to the Open Source Community and our staff are active contributors to this community.
Meridian's History
Meridian's key characteristics of flexibility, business solution orientation, focus on delivery, identification with our customer and long term perspective were established early in it's existence and have been continuously refined and refocused to maintain excellence in the business and technical services we offer to our clients in an every changing environment.
Beginnings (1990-1994)
Meridian was formed in late 1989 by the staff of the CSR Limited MIS Group. Following 6 years as an successful, respected internal consultancy and a positive review from McKinsey & Company and in a frenzy of entrepreneurial zeal they decided to outsource themselves.
At the time CSR was one of the largest Australian diversified companies and the MIS Group was responsible for IT services in a very wide range of clients including CSR's Corporate HQ, Group "common" systems and some of the operating divisions including Oil & Gas, Coal, Minerals and Sugar. With the support of senior management the staff of the MIS Group formed Meridian Information Services offering IT services to former internal clients.
Building on its expertise in the Cognos PowerHouse 4GL Meridian sought partnerships with suppliers of packages on this platform. These included StarGarden (Vancouver), HR & Payroll; Visibility (Boston), "custom" manufacturing and relationships with other suppliers in North America, Asia and Europe. Additionally Meridian developed and offered a set of middle range financials especially targeted to project accounting.
Projects in New Zealand, Singapore, Indonesia, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane broadened Meridian's client base making it one of the major regional suppliers of custom and packaged software written for PowerHouse, deployed on Digital VAX & Alpha (VMS & Unix), Data General (AOS & Aviion Unix), IBM AS/400, IBM RS/6000 (AIX), Sun Unix and Intel PC (SCO Unix & MS-DOS) platforms.
Re-focus (1995-1999)
By the mid 1990s PowerHouse was "maturing" as a development language. Meridian adopted new platforms, architectures and languages to better service the evolving needs of it's clients while maintaining focus on business areas in which it could continue excellence and mastery.
To aid this revised focus Meridian was reorganised into two business units, "Banking & Finance" and "Government & Health Services". Meridian redirected its technical focus towards the MS Windows based languages (Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, C++) for client development and C for Unix server development as well as new deployment options on Windows NT servers. From 1996 our attention increasingly turned to Java and the Web for both client and server solutions.
In early 1995 Meridian & FICS Group (Belgium), at that time the leading European supplier of electronic banking products, formed a joint venture to promote, implement and support FICS products in Australia. Meridian wholly funded, resourced and managed this joint venture until 1998.
Meridian custom developed a corporate electronic banking product for the Commonwealth Bank (Diammond Services) and resourced joint projects to customise, implement and support FICS products for Westpac (Business DeskBank), National Australia Bank ( Retail Internet) and the design stages for St George Bank (ebank). Meridian participated in other overseas FICS projects in electronic banking and prudential regulatory reporting.
A reorganisation of FICS Group's global operations resulted in the joint venture being dissolved in mid 1998. FICS was taken over by the US based S1 Corporation shortly afterwards. Meridian continued the support and development roles with the Commonwealth and National Australia Banks.
New Beginnings (2000-2005)
By 2000 Meridian decided to split into two independant companies to better serve each customer base.
A new company, Meridian Health Informatics , continued the Govt & Health business, taking
on additional shareholders with existing operations in the Health sector, while Meridian Informatics continues an enhanced Banking and Finance
software focus. This allows both businesses to remain focused on the specific requirements of their respective customer sectors.
Meridian Informatics has standardised on enterprise technologies including Java and MS .NET facilitated via it's involvement in the development of business object frameworks with international partners and adoption of Open Source tools & components. These have been used as the basis for projects for the Commonwealth Bank, EDS Australia, Colonial First State Investments, Ipac Securities and other clients.
Meridian has further enhanced it's Business Intelligence / Corporate Performance Management practice using Cognos, Microsoft & Open Source tools to deliver complete integrated Data Warehouse and reporting solutions.
Integration and Enhancement (2005+)
Meridian provided technical support to National Australia Bank for their National Online (NOL) desktop product. Meridian also provided assistance during the development of NAB Connect, NAB's business level online banking service.
Meridian continues to provide an integrated solution to assist "onboarding" customers to NAB Connect. Meridian developed a tool, Onboarding Accelerator (OA), to extract data from back-end systems, including mainframes, web services, and other websites. After review, the information is pushed automatically to NAB Connect. This enables clients to be onboarded efficiently.
Meridian has also provided productivity tools allowing clients to be migrated from old systems to NAB Connect. We continue to provide support and enhancements to ensure systems works smoothly and adjusts to changing enivronments.
Vision
Meridian has always followed client and delivery focused principles what have more recently become expressed in "Agile Methodologies" and more specifically in the Agile Alliance Manifesto.
In Meridian's view among the more important of
the principles are,
"Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software"
"Delivered working software is the primary measure of our progress"
Our corporate vision and mission are also summed up in meanings of the two words that form our name, see below for some details.
About our name - Vision, mission, values
Meridian Informatics, these two words describe our vision, skils, services and purpose.
Some organisations spend much time and money on acquiring and promoting a corporate name and identity, other names, for better or worse, just happen. Meridian's original name, in 1989, was 'Meridian Information Services', selected so our original CSR Limited customers could continue to call us what they had previously, i.e. 'MIS'.
After 10 years and a new direction in 2000 the 'Services' was dropped from our name, (but not to our clients) and 'Information' became 'Informatics'.
As you see below these make a statement about where we think we are going and about the essence of our skill and service.
Meridian (in addition to the more common meanings from astrometry and navigation)
A point or period of highest development, greatest prosperity; pertaining to a period of greatest elevation, prosperity or splendour;
apex, pinnacle; crowning or climatic.
Informatics
A discipline which investigates, analyses and explores the structure, representations, interactions and properties of information,
(as opposed to content), with the object of understanding, explaining and mastering these so that the information can be transformed and productively
utilised. The central notion of informatics is the transformation of information in complex computational systems. (
University of Edinburgh
).
Meridian's Mission
At its simplest Meridian's mission is to work with our clients to supply the software tools that enable them to transform their data into information, this information into knowledge and the knowledge into action leading to competitive advantage for them.